IP/Country visibility for board volunteers

[Retesto]

While I think it's a good idea to encrypt the user IPs from board volunteers, there's a problem with that. For example, I'm moderating a board where a notorious shitposter samefags all the time from multiple devices and generally causes a lot of problems. There's no way to tell if he's ban evading unless I can see what country he's from, since he's the only person from that country lurking the board so it becomes obvious. I don't know if the board owner is capable of seeing the full IP but I don't want to message him all the time this shitposter ban evades, I should be able to tell by myself.

So, if you insist on encrypting the user IPs, could you at least show a flag of their country next to them? It would help with moderation a lot.

[bui]

and what if someone ban evades with an IP from a different country...? this won't help much

[Retesto]

Well supposedly that's hard to do, since most ban evaders usually switch to a mobile connection, meaning that their IP will still be from the same country.

[bui]

most? I highly doubt that. still:

a) it could still cause false positives; you might wrongly ban someone you think is the shitposter just because they're in the same country b) if this is implemented and they know, they'll likely make an effort to use different countries to confuse you c) privacy implications for everybody else

[Retesto]

In my particular case I don't think that the shitposter is that smart. And after all no one is going to ban all people from the same country anyway, just the shitposting ones.

And I don't think there's a privacy issue if you only see the country for example, not the full IP. I mean, moderators are already able to filter all posts by a certain IP, seeing the country wouldn't be making it much worse.

[7185]

While I think anonymity is great, there is an user shitposting with proxies on my board, so I need to see his user agent and maybe his screen resolution since I'm pretty sure he's the only one using that one.

^{Please don't do that.}

[Retesto]

Sarcasm aside, I don't think that the moderators being able to see the users' country is such a big deal.

[7185]

That's true, but it's not really needed, except in this particuliar case, thanks to one shitposter. But that also means that people from the more representated country on your board are "more anonymous" than the others, and I don't think that's fair.

What I meant with my sarcastic answer is that being able to see the country is not a big deal, but neither is being able to see something else meaningless like the screen resolution. I wish there was another way to deal with your problem.

[Retesto]

I wish there was a way around that, but this person can cause really a lot of shit. Even on 4chan the mods resorted to ban everyone from the same country and delete all of their posts repeatedly, but he still kept evading despite that.

[bui]

hold on, let me get this straight

you only care about this because he's ban evading -- not because he's shitposting (or not)? why? ban evasion doesn't become a problem until someone shitposts, in which case, you ban them

you don't need to ban someone who isn't shitposting, regardless of who they are

[Retesto]

Exactly, but the point is that he still shitposts all the time, just not enough to deserve a ban. So the place gets filled with lots of low quality posts, but they're borderline acceptable since they don't break any rule. And ban evading is still a rule on some boards.

It's a shame that I can't explain the issue in more detail, but trust me, I'm not overreacting.

[bui]

then use your own judgement to deal with such posts; the original poster should be completely irrelevant

what you're doing is being biased, letting some posts stay and deleting others just because you don't like the authors. that's kinda why IPs aren't public, so moderation doesn't go down the shitter

if you care so much, enable flags on your board

[ctrlcctrlv]

"you only care about this because he's ban evading -- not because he's shitposting (or not)? why? ban evasion doesn't become a problem until someone shitposts, in which case, you ban them"

i wish i could give upboats on github

this is not going to happen OP